


Fantaisie Impromptu

by volti



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Flashbacks, Inspired by Music, Memories, Multi, Video & Computer Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 15:16:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20641295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volti/pseuds/volti
Summary: Usually, "surreal" has to do with unlocked potential, the unconscious, all the elements of a dream.This could be that. Music and art are good at those sorts of things.In which Adrien finds rebellion in the little ways and fires off more chain reactions than he, and the people he admires, ever bargained for.





	Fantaisie Impromptu

**Author's Note:**

> man stuff sure does happen when you play Breath of the Wild and get shot all the way back to the first time you played Ocarina of Time, huh.
> 
> don't forget to click the music links embedded in the fic! they go really well with each part c:

Adrien’s been working on this piece for months, and he’s had enough of impromptu fantasies.

Not that he’s tired of all fantasies; he’s pretty sure he practically runs on them to survive the days, the dread of his father showing up at any moment, the melancholy of remembering that he hardly ever does. Most of the time, they’re quite simple: a life outside the gates of his home, outside the direct route to school or photoshoots and back again. _More than this provincial life_, just like the fairytale movie he used to watch from beginning to end, over and over, when he was young. A trip to the movies with his friends, a hangout session at Nino’s house, even an afternoon at Le Grand Paris with Chloé. Even an evening with… _her_. Especially an evening with her.

To be fair, some of those fantasies do involve _her_ too. Sure, they occasionally involve quiet conversations during night patrols. Those aren’t so unusual, but they still give him a thrill, remind him of what it feels like to be alive. But sometimes—just sometimes—he lets his imagination run away with him, take him by the hand and lead him to a place where he lets the mask and the costume melt away. Where he shows Ladybug all of him, and hopes to God that she takes him for who he really is. Where, for a moment that could feel timeless, she might let him take her into his arms.

That seems a little _less_ impromptu.

But, at the end of the day, he’ll take anything beyond the walls of his admittedly spacious bedroom. Anything beyond the sleek black and ivory of the piano, the steely gaze of his father who once told him that Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s _Solfeggietto_ was meant to be played _prestissimo_, and he was barely playing _presto_.

For someone who’s touted for ages the philosophy that the Agrestes are a family of soloists, his father sure gives a lot of backseat criticism and refuses to actually model what he’s looking for. Not that he’d actually say so out loud; he likes enjoying what little privileges he does have.

And, admittedly, stretching them where he can.

There’s a music room on campus at the Collège Françoise Dupont, hidden away on the second floor. It gives him mixed feelings whenever he passes by it, but it’s still where his body takes him, naturally, when they just so happen to have a free period in the school day. Because in spite of all the emptiness and contempt that comes with nonstop practice, there’s still a substantial part of him that feels obligated to keep at it, that feels some kind of peace when he takes a seat at the bench. Or, maybe, that substantial part of him would weigh him down with guilt if he didn’t.

Still, he finds himself dipping easily into routine as he warms up with a few scales. He’s never practiced at school before, but the emptiness of the room, the echo of the notes off the walls, still feels so familiar to him. If he closed his eyes, he might as well be at home with his father’s gaze drilling into his back.

But he isn’t home. And his father isn’t here. And he could—if he really, _really_ wanted to—take a few liberties with Frédéric Chopin.

Adrien cracks his knuckles, flexes his fingers, and begins to [play](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcgFSgFRukE) in a surprisingly pleasant solitude.

He doesn’t think it’s ever felt so liberating, bringing something so classical to life under his own fingers. He can feel the fantasy of it now. Every hop, skip, and jump of the notes, even if they come out a little slower than they’re meant to. But no one is going to lecture him on the difference between _presto_ and _prestissimo_ here. And certainly no one is going to stop him in the middle of the piece and chide him for… improvising some of the notes.

(Well, it is called an _impromptu_ fantasy, isn’t it?)

To be fair, it’s not improvising so much as it is, he might argue, a marriage of pieces that could very well align. One would have to have a particularly keen ear to notice the difference. And, perhaps, it really only makes itself known when he decides to slow down.

It isn’t a fantasy at this point, though. It’s a memory.

It had to have been years ago, the first time he sat with his mother at the piano. He was in her lap, he remembers, with his tiny hands splayed across hers as she showed him the delicate manner of scales and arpeggios. At the end of it all, she took his hand in hers, guided his finger to middle C—a still pristine but well-loved key—and told him, “This is where everything begins and ends. This is where you go if you’re ever lost. Once you find middle C, everything falls into place.”

It had to have been years ago, too, when she took a graceful seat next to him in that bedroom of his, even more giant then that it feels now, and asked him about the video game he was playing. He must have been ten or eleven then, making his way through some convoluted forest-themed dungeon, and the first thing he told her then was, “I don’t get it. There’s no middle C here.”

“Well,” she said, “where’s your favorite place to go?”

Confused, he took her to a fountain in the game, where fairies healed him and harps played a trickling sort of tune that comforted him and made him want to cry for a reason he couldn’t place.

“This,” she said, stroking his hair in the dark, “is your middle C.”

He took her word on it, because in every iteration of this game, there were always fountains and harps. And he tried to find every single one, tried to sink into that crying music even when she wasn’t there to hear it. Even when no one was—because his father started to recede and resrict and because Nathalie never bothered to entertain him emotionally—and he had to rely on owning nearly every game in existence for comfort. Those were the only ones he would play consistently, no matter how many times he beat them, because playing against AIs of every difficulty only served to remind him how lonely he really was in all this space, and at least he could rely on a fairy or two to heal him up and make him feel wanted. At least he could rely on a menu to lull him to sleep sometimes.

So when he slows down, he finds all the little ways to fit those notes into Chopin, finds his middle C even if he never actually plays it. He doesn’t bother to play the rest of the piece the way it’s intended; he only lets the notes sit in his mind and seep into the walls as he plays and replays that cycle of eight measures, a soothing scherzo that barely swells inside him. Neither of his parents will ever hear it, and he’s split somewhere between relief and regret the longer he plays, but he refuses to stop. Not when this is the most alive he’s felt out of his suit.

_She_ might never hear it either—not unless she’s as hopeless a romantic as he is, and finds some way to linger by his window and dream with him—but perhaps he’ll add it to his repertoire of thought. His middle C.

He swears he hears humming, soft and low, but when he glances toward the door there’s no sign of anyone there. Maybe it’s only his mother coming alive, too, where she can. He doesn’t let himself think about it long enough to wallow in it. He plays on, the food of love, because for once, no one will criticize him, and for once, he wants to.  
  


* * *

  
Thank goodness Adrien didn’t catch her.

In her defense, how could Marinette not help herself? No one ever used the music room these days—which was surprising, considering she was friends with at least three musicians. So when she heard that rapid-fire piano floating down the hall and into the art room, she naturally _had_ to investigate.

All right, so maybe the influence of having an amateur journalist for a best friend was rubbing off on her, but curiosity didn’t kill _all_ cats, did it?

It was worth the satisfaction in the end, though, to see Adrien—sweet, kind, dreamy _Adrien_—seated at the piano and working the keys like old friends. He was so focused, though, squinting down at his handiwork with the tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth. How could she not just lean on the doorway and stay? How could she not just _watch_?

And more than that, there was something about the tune that sounded so… familiar to her. Even those rainy, impossible notes sounded like something from so long ago, when her parents used to play classical music on the apartment stereo and videotape her trying to dance to it. But there was something else there. Something not quite so classical, but still so gentle, so fanciful.

She didn’t pick up on it until the music started to slow. Her heart swelled, and her mind clicked, and the moment she heard it, she couldn’t _un_hear it.

It was the fairy fountain tune. How could she not recognize it? She’d heard it so many times. All it took was months and months of saving allowance and tips with her father, all those years ago. Just enough to afford a console, and just one game. It wasn’t that they couldn’t afford just anything when they wanted it; owning one of the best bakery-patisseries in Paris could earn you a pretty penny or two, after all. It was the saving that made it fun. The looking forward to something together. The working toward a goal together.

Then they unboxed all that joy, plugged the old thing in—even blew on the cartridge to make sure it would work properly—and that was one of the first songs she heard. Sure, it sounded old, because the game was old. But it was simple, sweet, stuck in her head for ages. Sometimes she’d linger on the menu screen just so she could keep listening to it, over and over, and her father never once got upset. He only sat with her until she had her fill and was ready to press start.

They had to pass the controller back and forth between them back then, because it was a single-player game. In hindsight, they probably should have gotten something different—one of those racing or fighting games where they could face each other. But it was worth the quality time, worth the value of learning to take turns. And at least she’d had someone to rely on back then, when the puzzles were too difficult and the monsters were too scary for her to fight.

It had never been about the puzzles or the monsters. It had been about her father, always. It had been about the fun. And the smiles. And the music.

And when she heard Adrien play it, play her back to her childhood, she was humming before she realized it herself. Hands on her heart, sliding to the floor and everything.

He knew about it, too.

And here she thought she couldn’t possibly be more in love.

Maybe that’s the reason it’s been stuck in her head for the last few days. Because love is what it sounds like.

It’s been ages since she picked up a flute, and even longer since she’s seriously studied a few pages of sheet music. Frankly, she’s been thinking about it from the moment Jagged Stone asked if she could join his group. But ever since she heard Adrien play, she’s been poking her head into the music room—just for a few minutes in the morning, just to see if the space calls to her at all. She’s been scrolling through a few internet searches, too, to see who’s transcribed this little tune. Who’s done it the most justice. But studying a screen only does so much good, and soon enough her fingers are itching for one of the rental flutes she knows are tucked away in the music room’s cubbies.

She doesn’t have to make up a particularly colorful excuse at lunch. All she has to do is tell her friends she needs some time to herself, because she has a lot to do and even more to think about, and they leave well enough alone. She’s sure to exchange a few words with them where she can, even—maybe especially—Luka, who’s studying her quietly in between bites of cottage pie.

Marinette’s always had the odd feeling that he knows more about her than she affords to let on. It’s only that she won’t let herself think too much about it, because what she can’t afford is to catastrophize.

The music room is silent and pleasantly empty when she slips inside; whether that’s a relief or a disappointment, she’s not quite sure. Still, some part of her is happy to be alone with her own mistakes, to not be on display for anyone who might laugh at her for being out of practice. And another part of her is happy to be alone with the nostalgia that washes over her when she picks up one of the worn black cases.

Oh, it _has_ been so long, hasn’t it?

With a newfound lightness in her heart, she takes a seat, dragging a music stand with her. Everything, from popping the case open to putting the instrument together, feels like welcoming an old friend, apologizing for being away for so long. Then she closes her eyes, raises the flute to her lips, and blows, and the first note soothes her instantly.

She can’t play this thing if she’s smiling so wide her cheeks hurt. Maybe she’ll just have to put a few more lunches aside. To get used to the feeling again, of course.

She looks for that sheet music in between practicing the scales she thought were long forgotten and tapping out the few notes she knows she’ll need, in the sequence she’ll need them. Her fingers resist the stretch at first, but gradually they come into place again, just the way they used to. Every so often, she has to stop and cradle the flute to her chest. It’s partly out of her own happiness, the question of why she spent so long away from it lingering in between the notes, and partly because of the people who put the music in her heart to begin with. For a flicker of a moment, she wonders what it might be like for either of them (and there are two, and she’ll finally, _finally_ admit it to herself) to overhear her. But if she thinks about that too much, she’ll get too tangled up in the notes, and nothing will come out the way it’s supposed to.

So Marinette closes her eyes again, thinks only of her father, and starts to [play](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhZP092St-4).

The notes come out slow and uncertain at first, but soft and pure all the same. Just what she’d expect if she were some battle-hardened adventurer looking for some reprieve. It gets hard to fight back that smile again, but she won’t make it through if she lets it win, so she’ll hold onto it for later. She almost wishes there were some background accompaniment—a harp, maybe, or even a piano—so her playing wouldn’t echo so forlornly off the walls and come back to her. She plays anyway, keeps at it even when she has to open her eyes again to read the music, when each note trickles out of the flute like rain. She has to pause a couple of times, because it’s her first time in a long time and she knows she won’t get it perfect right away. But it doesn’t have to be perfect just yet. It just has to be played. Then it can be perfect.

As soon as the tune comes to an end, she starts again, and again, until she doesn’t need to rely on the sheet music anymore. Until her eyes can flutter shut again, and she can picture herself at every fountain praying for the strength of a beautiful woman. Until her fingers fall into a natural pattern, and the notes swell where her breaths allow it, and she lets herself stand and sway in place.

Would Adrien ever play with her, if he knew she could play? Would he think she was good enough?

Would Luka play with her, if he knew the tune at all? Could he hear it in her heart and pick it up from there?

Marinette doesn’t have the answers when the bell rings, but she’s left her name on a sign-out sheet and carried a worn black case back to class by the time it rings again.  
  


* * *

  
Luka should have known the two of them could make the most beautiful music. Adrien, of course—they’d played together before—but Marinette especially. He heard it in her heart all the time, and now he’s heard it from her hands.

The first time was pure happenstance. Luka likes to think of himself as someone who tangles up with _just-so-happenings_ and goes with their flow until they’re done with him; he likes to think he got that from his mother, because who else could he have gotten it from? And this time he _just so happened_ to catch Adrien absolutely _shredding_ Chopin on the baby grand on campus. (He always found it funny that everyone liked to pretend it didn’t exist. Was the music room haunted or something? Was it one of those weird eldritch horror things where only the select few could see it?)

But there were parts of that piece that… it wasn’t that Luka didn’t recognize it. It just threw him off-kilter for a moment, because he was ninety percent sure that _Fantaisie Impromptu_ didn’t have any measures that sounded like _that_. Or maybe they did sound like that, but he never really recognized it. Either way, there was something about it that drew him out of the main hallway and up the stairs, that compelled him to follow as much as he could, and to wait.

And to keep waiting, once he saw Marinette and stopped in his tracks. It looked like she had the same idea he did, and she beat him there. She looked so… in love then, lingering by the doorway and peeking into the music room. Even when she went stiff and turned away too sharply, even when she slid to the floor with her hands on her heart and a blissful little smile on her lips. Those were the moments, Luka decided, that she looked her most beautiful.

Not that that was saying much. He always thought she was beautiful. He always saw her.

He didn’t have to guess who was playing. The answer was more than obvious from her expression.

He could have guessed that if she’d seen him, she would have gotten flustered and scrambled to her feet the moment she saw him. She would have known that no amount of explaining would get her off the hook, because all she’d do was rub her neck awkwardly and look away. And he wouldn’t mean to make her turn so red, just by asking her if she liked listening to Adrien play. But she would, because she’s Ma-Ma-Marinette, and he’d think about it for days to come. Just as much as he’d think about the glimpses of Adrien he caught in the few seconds it took him to walk past the music room.

Just as much as he’d think about how… peaceful Adrien looked at the piano. There was something complicated about it; Luka could see it, feel it, in the moments after Marinette left. It was relieved and conflicted all at once—like someone had forced him to make this music all these years, and for just a few moments of his life he’d found the power to make it his own.

Maybe that was why Chopin sounded so weird.

So unique.

Maybe that was why it sounded so… charming.

Maybe that was why Luka wanted to keep listening to him. Chopin, Adrien, whoever.

Or maybe it was because, days later, he knew why he recognized the song. All it took was a flute, those moments of music luring him through the halls again, the pause in the empty doorway, for his heart to swell all over again.

All it took was Marinette.

Most of the time, that was all it ever took. She was… scary good at getting most other people to love her. Getting most other people to love each other, too. But this time, she was so absorbed in herself for once, instead of in the people around her, that Luka couldn’t help but linger, stare. It was so rare to see her like this, to feel her this way, to hear such smooth and even notes, that he almost wanted to capture it. Watch it over and over in his spare moment.

(If he didn’t know any better—if he weren’t at least ninety percent sure already—he’d probably mistake her for Rena Rouge. But Marinette has no illusions. She stitches every emotion right into her clothes, adds them to her designs with every pencil stroke. Makes sure everything she creates has every feeling on full display. They’re alike like that. It’s probably exactly why he adores her.)

But once Luka combs through the feelings and this frozen moment, once he untangles the tune, everything falls into place, and he realizes why it took him so long to get here. Firstly, it was in a different key than he was used to hearing, and second, quite literally, he could never afford it.

It’s not that he’s ever been upset about things like that; it’s become more of a fact of life, “just the way things go,” that his family has never spent money on the latest video games and consoles. Even the lone cabinet in the houseboat isn’t exactly functional. It’s just there because it is, because his mother loves anything and everything that can be a testament to the fact that their house is chaos. That anything can and should and _will_ belong. But he still grew up on window shopping, and that was more than enough for him. Especially when he could pass by the video game store and, nine times out of ten, hear a simple menu tune from the TV in the window. It sounded like some kind of lullaby—a traditional one, anyway—and whenever he couldn’t get it out of his head, he’d go to the mall just to listen to it again if he could.

It wasn’t until a few years later that he found out what game it came from. From then on, if it ever came back to haunt him, all it took was a quick search to pull him back in again.

It hasn’t come back to him in ages. Not until Marinette plays it, smiling with her fingers and the sway of her body because her lips are too preoccupied. Of course she must be playing it because of Adrien, but she probably wouldn’t play it herself if she didn’t know it, too. If it didn’t mean something to her, too.

Maybe it comes back because of both of them. Maybe he carries both of them in his heart, just the way they carry each other. And maybe—a part of him hopes—they carry a little of him, too.

Luka doesn’t know exactly what’s going on between the two of them, Adrien and Marinette. To be fair, Marinette’s not quite so good at hiding how she feels about Adrien. It’s obvious from the way her eyes sparkle when she looks his way, to the gentle affection in how she says his name, right down to the dejected turn of her lips when he’s busy with something else, or when he’s spending time with another girl. But then, if Adrien’s trying to hide something too, either he’s not so good at it either, or Luka’s just incredibly good at picking it up. He’s seen how Adrien pauses to look at her sometimes, how every day he talks like he’s crumbling for her just a little more, how he softens at the edges and probably doesn’t even realize it when someone even mentions Marinette around him.

It’s a complicated game the two of them play. Especially when sometimes they turn it on him, too. Look at him like he’s the sun or the moon or the answer to all their questions when all he’s ever done is smiled and strummed. Maybe it’s because he’s good at playing what they’re thinking so they don’t have to say it. Because he’s good at finding all the little places he can fit, and fitting himself there in just the right way.

Adrien and Marinette have probably been dancing around each other for ages, and now they’ve just found another way to do it. And somehow he’s found a way to do it with them, and the warm pockets in their hearts—the parts that play this little memory of a tune—tell him over and over that he just might be welcome.

Luka practices at home at first, from the comfort of his bed while Juleka watches him and probably remembers, too. It takes him a while to get the tabs just right, but he finds that all he has to do is play a little slower, with a drumbeat on loop, to get the feeling down. From there, all he has to do is watch the people around him. Listen for the way Marinette’s heart floats, the way Adrien’s tries to reach out for something he can’t name.

All he has to do is sit in the courtyard, see them stealing glances at each other from opposite corners, before he slings his guitar on and [plays](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUnkI2jzsKI). The smoothness of the flute. The scurrying of the piano. He finds it all and plays it out. Smiles and strums, smiles and strums.

The effect is almost instant. The two of them freeze in the middle of whatever conversations they’re having, look his way with wide eyes. Suddenly, in between the taps of his heel and the pluck of the strings, it’s not so hard to hear all the nights Adrien must have played every game alone, all the sleepy summer afternoons when Marinette pulled her father to play with her. It’s not so hard to hear the ways they should fit together. And it’s not so hard to hear the ways that, maybe, he could make those nights a little less lonely, the ways that he could be pulled along, too.

Marinette takes the first step, even as Luka continues to play, and it’s hardly surprising to him. Her eyes are glittering even from this distance, and her smile stretches from ear to ear. It only disappears for a second when she steals one last look toward Adrien, and she finds herself caught between the two of them in more ways than one. She probably has been for a while now. She turns a deep shade of red, rubs the back of her neck, and then her shoulders go slack, and she takes that second step.

“Can I sit with you?” she asks—stammers, really—once she gets to the bench where Luka’s sitting. She’s wringing her hands and looking down at her shoes, almost like she’s expecting him to say no.

But he smiles, in that mellow way he reserves only for her, and sits in the middle to make room. Both of their hearts swell and soar; there’s no way she can’t feel it, too.

“Is this what my heart sounds like?” she says after a moment. She’s looking toward Adrien now, who’s still in the corner watching them both.

Luka lifts his gaze, tilts his head to invite him over. “Something like that.”

All it takes is two smiles for Adrien to cave. All it takes is a few more notes for Adrien to know he’s known, for him to come over and gesture to the empty space and ask, “Is this seat taken?”

Luka looks between the two of them, makes sure his eyes are on Marinette’s as he slides all the way down. Makes sure to meet Adrien’s gaze before he flicks his own toward the gap in the middle. “Now it is.”

It’s almost endearing, how stiffly he sits down. How, little by little, they relax into the notes and their hearts entwine. A mother, a father, a screen on display.

Just before the bell rings, Adrien asks them both, “Do you know about the music room?”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/omnistruck) and a [Tumblr](http://voltisubito.tumblr.com); follow me there for more shenanigans! Feel free to leave comments and questions and stuff in my [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/omnistruck) as well c: and kudos here, too!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!!! I hope you're having a lovely day <3


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